Fishing for Fishies

The idiosyncratic Australian band’s most streamlined album to date is risky only in that it is their first to be downright boring.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s fourteenth release since 2012, Fishing for Fishies, is vaguely about the environment, but mostly about goofing off with expensive equipment in service to the concept of “boogie oogie ooging.” While in the past, this highly prolific Australian band toyed with messy elements of garage, psych, and space rock, here, they attempt a soulless blues with the aid of unbridled harmonica. At first blush, the resulting album might be their riskiest endeavour yet: more streamlined than anything they’ve released before, it offers no wall of noise to hide behind. What actually manifests is a 43-minute slog, risky only in that it is the first King Gizzard record ever to be downright boring.

Fans worship this band for more or less for legitimate reasons: They’ve written music in an infinite loop, released fivealbumsinoneyear, played with two drum sets, and crafted lyrics that are both hilarious and fun to dissect. Fishies has none of that. The title track is one such culprit: Taking up an “anti-fishing” agenda, King Gizz attempt to tackle conservationism, but a lazy Mellotron flute and seemingly endless swampy guitar make them sound like they’re auditioning to score a Shrek spin-off instead. “Boogieman Sam,” one of three songs with the word “boogie” in the title, is equally banal. Built around two foot-stomping, Led Zeppelin-indebted drum parts and a grating harmonica line, the song is about a Slenderman-type figure who “ate mumma’s babies, and shot the policeman.” Eventually you begin to feel that perhaps you have heard enough tailgating rock’n’roll scuzz, but the harmonica refuses to quit. “Yeah, yeah, boogie, boogie, boogie,” sings frontman Stuart Mackenzie, until your eyes roll into the back of your head.

Throughout, Fishing for Fishies pulls generously from the pantheon of classic rock. When done right, stacking an album with riffy guitar and proggy synthesizer can be compelling and enjoyable: Take the equally prolific Ty Segall, the decidedly less prolific Sheer Mag, or anything King Gizzard released prior to 2019. At its worst, culling sounds from the past can sound like paranoid, derivative vampirism. The band’s proclivity to the latter is most evident on “The Cruel Millennial,” about a millennial who feels prematurely old and washed up. “I was only born in ’92/Yet I rust the cruel millennial,” Ambrose Kenny-Smith laments over a noodling guitar that sounds a bit like a chicken squawk. He continues: “Berenstain Bears/Read to as kids/It’s a glitch in the matrix/Can’t relate face to face with the modern day youth.” One would hope there’s a degree of irony at work here, but with a sound so stubbornly entrenched in the past, perhaps a fear of being replaced by younger and more talented people is warranted.

While cynicism is undeniably Fishies’ operative mood, a couple of moments feel goofy in a good way. “Acarine” imagines a world where Giorgio Moroder became deeply invested in the Who’s “Baba O'Riley,” complete with a subterranean synthesizer warble and a variegated guitar part that flickers like a strobe light. “Reals Not Real,” meanwhile, breaks up mosh pit-inducing nu-metal guitar runs with major-key piano melodies. But these delightful little oddities are staunchly in the minority, and compared to other songs from King Gizzard’s discography, still qualify as some of their weakest offerings to date.

It’s a shame to see a band with such clear skill and experimental prowess release an album as doltish as Fishing for Fishies, especially considering that, not so long ago, they managed to release five good albums in a single year. There is very little joy involved in listening to these nine songs; they sound like a stoner’s tribute to the music of “Guitar Hero,” sprinkled with a dash of Baby Boomer complacency. After a remarkably weird and great run, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have gone fishing in murky waters and caught only an old shoe.